


human after all

by waveydnp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009 Era (Phandom), Asexuality Spectrum, Hand Jobs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:33:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23299372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveydnp/pseuds/waveydnp
Summary: october 2009 but dan is ace
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 35
Kudos: 227
Collections: phandomficfests: escape from reality





	human after all

Dan’s the one to kiss first. He’s not sure what possesses him, maybe something about the shyness in the big blue eyes that keep catching his or the playful bites Phil keeps sinking into Dan’s shoulder. Maybe he just… wants to. 

So he does. It’s not the first time he’s been unable to explain why he feels the way he feels, and he dares to think it won’t be the last.

The kiss is quick, the first time a pressing of lips against Dan’s hasn’t been initiated by someone else. He’s not a take charge sort of person. He doesn’t make things happen. Things happen _to_ him, and then he deals with the aftermath accordingly. 

Maybe something about Phil makes Dan feel like he can be different. It’s not a baseless hope, by any means. There’s never been anyone else he could spend five hours with on Skype and still be disappointed when it’s time to hang up. There’s never been anyone else who seemed to care what he had to say. 

Phil looks surprised after Dan kisses him. Then he looks happy, happy like Dan feels. Pink cheeks and a smile that’s trying its best not to give away how big it wishes it could be. Dan bites his lip and looks down at his hands, and Phil reaches out to grab one.

They’re both being brave. 

-

Manchester looks pretty from their view up in the clouds, all dark shadows and squares of light that scrape the sky with their sparkle. Dan feels sparkly too, warm and heavy from expensive drinks and almost as beautiful as the urban night sky outside the bar’s window. That’s how he feels when Phil looks at him, pretty and glowing and like maybe there isn’t actually anything wrong with him at all.

-

There’s a small sofa draped in blue sheeting, pushed up against the wall in a lonely corner of an otherwise cluttered bedroom. It’s been made up for Dan’s stay, though Phil says if he prefers he could sleep in his brother’s room down the hall or on the sofa in the lounge.

“Can I sleep with you?” Dan asks, and it’s strangely easy. He knows Phil will say yes, and he does, with a blush to match the one Dan had given him on the big wheel.

Dan reckons he likes this feeling. He likes asking for what he wants. He takes off his shirt and lets it fall to the green carpeted floor. 

-

Staying up late talking to Phil across the length of a pillow is something he knows right away he needs in his life. Skype pales to this. On Skype he can’t feel the warmth of Phil’s breath or press his cold toes to Phil’s shin and hear the adorable little squawks of protest. It’s the lingering smell of Phil’s cologne and his hand sliding under the covers and across the mattress to find Dan’s to hold. It’s Phil in HD, and Dan doesn’t fancy going back to anything less ever again. 

-

Breakfast is burnt toast at midday on Phil’s sofa that they eat while watching a film that neither of them are really watching. They’ve both showered, but where Dan’s already blow dried and meticulously straightened his hair with Phil’s crappy Poundland GHDs, Phil’s has a slight wave to it as it dries naturally. It’s fluffy and soft when Dan touches it.

He’s been doing that, reaching out and stealing little touches whenever he feels like it, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise when Phil leans into the small bit of distance between them and kisses Dan for real.

Phil is zealous, and despite Dan’s shock, the enthusiasm catches him up quickly. He’s never been kissed like this. No one’s ever wanted him like this.

It’s overwhelming. His brain is confused, but he kisses back, opens his mouth a little to meet Phil’s tongue. He shivers when Phil’s teeth graze his lip. Phil slides a hand up the back of Dan’s neck and into his hair. He cups the back of Dan’s head and makes a small deep noise in the back of his throat and Dan’s not sure what he’s feeling, but it’s something he’s never felt before. 

Maybe there isn’t actually anything wrong with him at all. 

But then Phil’s hand is on his thigh, squeezing, sliding up, and Dan panics. He gets his palm flat against Phil’s chest and pushes, gently, but firmly enough.

Phil’s lips are a deep pink, shiny with spit, and his eyes are wide and blue and scared. “I’m sorry,” he says, reaching up to touch his mouth. “Oh my god, did you not—”

Dan shakes his head, which he knows doesn’t actually clear anything up, but he can’t explain his reaction to himself, let alone to Phil. He can’t explain why he liked kissing Phil where he’s never liked kissing anyone else before, and he can’t explain why the thought of it going further than that makes his blood turn to ice in his veins. 

He looks into Phil’s face until he can’t anymore, until tears prick his eyes at the realization that he was right all along; something is wrong with him. He drops his gaze down and his breath catches in his throat at the sight of the tenting in Phil’s red plaid pajama pants. 

“You’re hard,” he says, sounding as dumbfounded as he feels. He did that. Phil’s hard because of him.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says. His voice is small and mortified, and Dan has to look into his eyes again.

He _hates_ the way Phil’s voice sounds when it’s anything but happy.

He likes that Phil is hard. And he can’t explain that any more than he can explain anything else. He leans in and presses a kiss to Phil’s open mouth.

Phil flinches.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says. “You surprised me.” It’s a bastardized version of the truth, but the truth nonetheless. 

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

Dan scoots in closer, his knee touching Phil’s thigh. “I like you.”

“God.” Phil hides his face. “I like you too, Dan.”

Dan mirrors Phil’s earlier action and puts his hand on Phil’s thigh. Phil lifts his head and stares at the wide spread of Dan’s pale fingers on the red lines of his trousers, then up to Phil’s face. 

Dan holds the eye contact as he slides his palm up to press against the clothed hardness between Phil’s legs. It might feel scary if not for the brief flutter of Phil’s eyelids. 

“You don’t have to do that,” Phil whispers. 

“I think I want to.”

“You think?”

Dan’s eyes flick down to watch his own fingers squeeze, then back up to catch Phil’s reaction, the almost inaudible puff of breath he lets out. “Do you like this?” 

Phil’s tone is almost pleading when he asks, “What?”

“I’m not taking the piss.” He presses the heel of his palm against Phil with more pressure. “Does that feel good?”

“Yeah,” Phil says. 

Dan feels a twinge of something in his stomach, a warm pride at the idea that he’s capable of affecting Phil in that way, and a desire to chase it further. “I wanna make you feel good.”

“Dan.” He wraps his hand around Dan’s wrist and gently pushes his hand away. “Stop.”

Dan deflates. 

“I pressured you,” Phil says gently, lacing his fingers in between Dan’s. “I hate that.”

Dan squeezes Phil’s hand, mesmerized by the softness of his skin. He’s held hands before, but never any as big as Phil’s. 

It feels good.

“You didn’t pressure me,” Dan says. “I don’t feel pressured.”

Phil makes a disbelieving face.

Dan takes a shaky breath and says what he has to say before he loses his nerve. “I’ve been pressured before. I know what it feels like, and this isn’t it.”

“Dan—”

Dan kisses him again. He just wants Phil to stop talking, to stop looking at him like he’s about to break.

He wants to believe he isn’t already broken. 

Phil kisses back. It’s easier like this, for Dan to communicate his affection. Words are hard when he can’t even find them for himself. He puts his hand on Phil’s thigh again, and Phil doesn’t push him away. 

The thing about Phil is that Dan trusts him. Implicitly, in a way he’s never come close to trusting anyone else before. In a lot of ways more than he even trusts himself. They haven’t known each other very long, but it’s been long enough for Dan to be confident that he could tell Phil anything and it wouldn’t cost him their friendship.

But Dan wants more than that. He does. He likes when Phil calls him pretty. He’s liking the kissing. He likes that the kissing makes Phil hard. He doesn’t know what to make of liking so many things he’s never liked before, but he knows it means more than friendship. 

He wants to tell Phil everything. If he could, he’d unzip his brain and let everything inside of it tumble into Phil’s hands. That would be easier than trying to find words to explain something that could cost him the step they’ve taken beyond friendship. 

He slides his hand up to Phil’s crotch. Phil is hard again, and he pulls away from the kiss, but only a little. His lips are still ghosting Dan’s and his words come out breathy and full of an intensity of feeling that only strengthens Dan’s resolve. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.” No thinking this time. He’s on the wheel again, and he’s going to ask for what he wants.

Phil lifts his hips off the sofa and pushes his trousers down to mid thigh. He wants it too. Dan hasn’t found many things hot in his life, but this is one of them. Phil wanting him is powerful enough to quiet the constant thrum of anxiety in his head that tells him he’s too different to ever find someone who could love him. 

Dan brushes his knuckles against the hard and soft of Phil’s cock and murmurs, “I’ve never done this before.”

“Only to yourself, yeah?” Phil smiles against Dan’s mouth.

Dan’s stomach twists, and he’s not quick enough to hide the sting of not being able to meet Phil’s expectations. 

Phil pulls his face back. “You haven’t?”

Dan shakes his head. He may not be ready to tell Phil the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but he’s not going to lie. “I’ve tried. Never really works.”

He waits for Phil’s judgment. He waits for Phil to pull up his pants and tell Dan this was all a mistake. He waits for the step back.

It doesn’t come. Phil takes Dan’s hand and asks, “Want me to show you?”

Dan nods two quick bobs of the head, heat pricking behind his eyes. He’s a little embarrassed, but mostly just overwhelmed at Phil’s goodness. 

“On you?” Phil asks.

Dan’s heart kicks. “No. You.”

So Phil guides Dan’s hand to his cock and closes Dan’s fingers around it. He squeezes over top of Dan’s fist and it’s warm and firm and smooth and a feeling all its own. He can’t really compare it to anything else because it _isn’t_ like anything else. 

It’s Phil. It’s the most intimate part of Phil’s physical body, and he’s sharing it with Dan already. 

That is a feeling so heady Dan really could cry if he gave it too much thought, and it wouldn’t do to shed tears while giving his very first handjob, so he presses his forehead to Phil’s and focuses on the way it feels to stroke him properly. 

It’s simple enough, the same rhythmic up and down movement he’s seen in countless videos on late night internet deep dives. Phil drops his hand after a short while and Dan keeps on. He feels a bit like a fraud, like a little boy in man’s clothing, but the look on Phil’s face tells a different story entirely. He makes a quiet noise that Dan might assume indicated pain if he didn’t know better, and Dan’s stomach flutters.

“Is this it?” Dan whispers. “It’s really this easy for you?”

Phil laughs. “I mean… yeah. It helps that it’s you, though.”

“Me?” It’s not false modesty, but Phil rolls his eyes.

“You know I think you’re fit.” 

“Yeah, but…” He trails off, looking down for the first time and seeing what he’s actually doing. He stares, transfixed. Somehow it looks so different from the times Dan’s tried this on himself. 

Phil reaches for him, finds the back of his neck again to cling on there. He makes another noise, quiet as ever but it cuts right into Dan’s gut.

“You like it,” Dan breathes.

Phil bites his lip and nods.

“Are you gonna…” His eyes flick between Phil’s then back down. “Could you…?” He can’t bring himself to say it, but Phil knows exactly what he means.

“God,” Phil rasps, his voice full of warmth, laughter, almost. “Yeah. Definitely. Maybe just…” He reaches down and squeezes around Dan’s hand. “Maybe go, like, a tiny bit faster?”

He speeds his pace only slightly, but it makes Phil close his eyes and tip his head against the back of the sofa. He lifts it back up almost as quickly as he’d let it drop, and looks at Dan. “Alright?” he asks, and Dan can tell it takes effort.

It emboldens him, the tightness in Phil’s voice, the flush of his cheeks, the heavy lid of his eyes. “I’m good,” he says. “I wanna make you come.”

Phil sucks in a slow breath through his teeth. “You’re going to.”

“Already?”

Phil laughs, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth.

“Sorry,” Dan mutters. 

Phil shakes his head. “You’re right, it’s a bit fast.”

“It’s— I wasn’t judging you.”

“This is helping, actually,” Phil says. He’s still grinning in a way that makes Dan’s whole body feel warm. “Keep talking to me, I’ll last for ages.”

Dan presses his lips together pointedly, then looks down to watch what he’s doing. Pride rushes over him again. Phil is _so_ hard, his hips nudging up to meet Dan’s hand on every downstroke. 

It makes Dan feel confident - safe, even, in a strange way. He speeds up a little more just to see how Phil will react, and it earns him a quiet groan. He twists his wrist a little around the head and Phil does that teeth sucking thing again. 

“You sure you’ve never done this before?” Phil croaks. “You’re really fucking good at it.”

“Shut up,” Dan mutters, but he can’t keep a sheepish smirk from quirking the corners of his mouth. He’s only heard Phil curse a handful of times, and in this context it feels… hot. It’s hot. 

Dan really doesn’t know what to do with that information. He’s enjoying this experience more than he ever thought he would, but he reckons it’s still not the same as it is for everyone else. He’s not hard; he doesn’t feel the urge to touch himself, but knowing that Phil is about to get off because of him is intoxicating.

“I’m close,” Phil says, voice gone low and tight.

Dan’s arm is starting to ache, but he keeps at it, speeding his pace a touch and watching Phil’s face contort. Phil tugs the hair at the nape of Dan’s neck and his head falls back against the sofa again. His body goes stiff and twitchy and then there’s warmth trickling down Dan’s fingers. He looks down to watch it happen, the pearly trails of wetness leaving Phil and painting Dan’s knuckles.

He’s watched it happen in porn a million times. It always looked so alien, but this is different. This is proof of Phil’s pleasure and it makes Dan’s heart race. He keeps stroking until Phil very gently takes hold of his wrist to still him. Dan tears his eyes from the oddly mesmerizing sight and looks at Phil’s face.

He looks like a man utterly at peace. “You can stop now,” he says, voice as gentle as his hands. “It kinda starts to hurt to keep going after you’ve finished.”

“Sorry.” He pulls his hand away, letting it hang in the air awkwardly. Porn doesn’t tell you what to do with this part, the part where the action is over and your hand is streaked with come.

But of course, Phil isn’t going to let him sit there floundering in his uncertainty. He smiles shyly and says, “I’ll go get some toilet roll.” 

Dan nods. He watches Phil pull his trousers up and wonders if that means he’s going to have to get changed.

Once Phil’s left the room, Dan looks at his hand properly. The warmth has cooled now, and when he spreads his fingers he finds it’s gone sticky too, creating something of a webbing. It’s a little gross, but Dan is surprised to discover that he doesn’t mind. 

He stands up, deciding soap and water would do better than toilet roll. He can hear Phil’s footsteps upstairs, and some unnameable emotion swirling in his chest dictates that he follow them. Something rather huge and groundbreaking just happened to him, and he doesn’t fancy spending a second longer than necessary away from the person he experienced that with. 

He finds Phil in the bathroom, tearing off a few squares of toilet roll. He’s wearing jeans now. Dan smiles at him, holding his hand up awkwardly. “Just gonna—” He nods at the sink, reaching with his other hand to turn the water on.

“Sorry I took so long,” Phil says, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. “I was a bit of a mess.”

“It’s fine.” He puts his hand under the stream of warm water, feeling Phil’s eyes on him. There’s a tension between them now, and Dan hates it. He hates not knowing if it’s real or imagined, if it’s mutual or just him being the freak he always is when matters of sex are involved.

He turns off the water, wipes his hand on his shirt and leans back against the counter with his arms crossed. “Is this what it’s supposed to feel like after?” he blurts. 

Phil blinks. “Um. What does it feel like?” 

“I dunno.” Dan looks down at his feet. “Weird, I guess?”

“Oh.”

Dan looks up at him.

He smiles. “Actually, yeah. I reckon. After the first time anyway.”

“Yeah?” Dan asks, but he already feels better.

“You don’t have to feel weird, though. Did I do something?”

Dan shakes his head automatically. Then he takes a moment to think. He looks down at his feet again, because there’s actually a whole hell of a lot Dan feels weird about, mostly none of which is about Phil himself, but of which he should probably start being honest if Phil is going to be his boyfriend. Or whatever.

“I’ve never had sex before,” he says quietly. “And I don’t know if I’ll ever want to.”

The ensuing silence is deafening. Dan’s skin crawls, and he’s considering bolting when he feels cool fingers brush his arm. He looks up and Phil is there. Like he always seems to be when Dan needs him. 

“If I made you feel like that’s something you had to want—”

Dan starts to protest, but Phil carries on. “I fancy you like crazy. I think you’re gorgeous, and that—” He gestures vaguely. “What just happened— it was amazing. But if you didn’t like it, that’s fine. We never have to do that again. Or anything like it.”

Dan’s throat is tight. He loves the sentiment but hates the words. He hates that this is what he’s reduced Phil to: floundering, feeling guilty. Apologizing for what came naturally to him. For what Dan _encouraged_ , for christ’s sake. 

“You’re my best friend, Dan. I don’t wanna lose that.”

That’s when Dan starts crying.

-

The tv goes back on, another film that promptly gets forgotten. Dan’s back is cradled by Phil’s chest, Phil’s elbow slung loosely around the side of his neck. Dan holds his hand and they talk.

They talk for hours. Or, Dan does. Mostly Phil listens. Sometimes he asks Dan questions. Dan is as honest as he can bring himself to be. He tells Phil things he’s never told anyone.

Phil doesn’t judge him. Dan can tell he doesn’t really understand, but he reckons that doesn’t actually matter. Hell, it’s not like he understands it either. All he really knows for sure is that he likes being close to Phil like this. He likes Phil’s arms around him, likes when Phil presses the side of his mouth to Dan’s temple and leaves it there a while, breathing warm on his face. 

Eventually he turns his head and catches Phil’s lips with his own and he likes that too. He likes knowing the exact level of softness of the inside of Phil’s mouth and the taste of his tongue and the way Phil always puts his hands in Dan’s hair. He likes it for real, and not because he feels like he’s _supposed_ to like it. 

They talk and kiss and talk some more, until the sun sets and Dan’s stomach audibly protests the lack of food it’s been given today. They order pizza. They film a video. 

They sleep in Phil’s bed, shirtless and tangled together. 

-

In the morning, Phil wakes him with a soft thumb stroking his hair off his face. His eyes are sleepy and beautiful and green-flecked blue looking back at him. 

“Morning,” he says, rumbly and deep, a voice Dan decides he wants in his ear for the rest of forever.

“Kiss me,” Dan says, and Phil does. “Now get up and make me breakfast. Proper one this time.”

Phil smiles and rolls out of bed. Dan follows.

He’s asking for what he wants. And Phil is giving it to him.


End file.
